SÁNDOR FERENCZI AND FIELD THEORY

Sándor Ferenczi was Freud’s most brilliant disciple and friend. When he died, in 1933, Freud wrote in his obituary that “most of [his] works … have made all analysts into his pupils” (Freud, 1933c, p. 228). Yet the clinical and theoretical interests he explored in his last few years were not to his teacher’s liking, because Ferenczi had revamped Freud’s original traumatic theory of neurosis and emphasized and explored in the clinic the import of environmental factors, which were anathema for Freud and his circle. This brought about a rupture between the two friends and colleagues, and the psychoanalytic circle violently rejected Ferenczi and his ideas. After his untimely death, at the age of sixty, a heavy cloak of silence and invisibility fell upon his memory and those themes that had been object of his research —traumas, the therapeutic regression, countertransference, and the analysis of psychotics (Balint, 1968). And when these themes were reintroduced to the analytic community, by thinkers such as Fairbairn, Winnicott, Balint, Paula Heimann, and Racker, no one, except Balint, who had been his analysand, colleague, and friend, quoted Ferenczi as a precursor. This virtual excommunication has only begun to lift during the past 25 years (Bonomi & Borgogno, 2014).

Ferenczi never used the term “field”, but his pioneering contributions have been fundamental for the development of psychoanalytic field theories. Once again, it is not the case that he is usually quoted as such, but his once heretical ideas have seeped unnoticed into the contemporary psychoanalytic discourse, without the corresponding recognition. But his extended shadow can be found in the origins and foundations of interpersonal psychoanalysis, the Independent tradition of object relations theory, self psychology, the study of early mother-child relations, interpersonal psychoanalysis, and relational psychoanalysis, all of them contributors to the development of field theory.

There are actually three major areas in which Ferenczi’s thought is essential for any psychoanalytic field theory. The first is his firm conviction that society and its values and prejudices play a major role in psychopathology, and that psychoanalysis should free patients from the dire consequences of a repressive education. This requires some approach to the problem of accounting for the mutual influences between individuals and society, and this can be provided by a psychoanalytical field theory, such as the one adumbrated by Enrique Pichon-Rivière and later formalized by Willy and Madeleine Baranger.

The second is his exploration of the mutual unconscious influence between human beings, as in married couples, mother and child, teacher and student, analyst and patient. In his very first psychoanalytic paper, written in 1908 and called “The effect on women of premature ejaculation in men”, instead of focusing on the causes of such premature ejaculation, he highlighted the effects this had on the woman, inducing pathological responses in her (Ferenczi, 1908).. In the same vein, 25 year later, in his last paper called “Confusion of tongues between adults and the child”, he explored the impact of the analyst’s unconscious processes on the patient´s transference, viewed as a kind of countertransference to the analyst’s transference to the patient (Ferenczi, 1933).

Of course, Freud (1912e) had already described the unconscious communication between the two parties of the analytic situation, but only in unilateral terms —i.e., from the patient to the analyst— as if the patient’s unconscious were not able to “read” the analyst’s. But Ferenczi went much further and conceived such communication as being bilateral, and this led him to the concept of the essential unity of the transference-countertransference, which is a prerequisite for the emergence and development of interpersonal psychoanalysis, object relations theory, and relational psychoanalysis, as well as the various psychoanalytic field theories.

The third and most important of Ferenczi’s contributions to the bases of field theory is his postulation of an originary undifferentiated state of mind, which he called “Thalassal”, from which all other mental states, experiences, perceptions, and thoughts evolve, and which remains present but unseen, underlying the more differentiated states. Thalassa is the Greek name for the sea, and he chose it to refer to his bold bioanalytical speculation about the phylogenetic trauma suffered by all those living beings that were forced to adapt to a new life on earth, when the ocean waters receded, with the consequence that they preserved an urge to return to their original environment. In the same way, those viviparous animals, such as ourselves, that develop a prenatal existence in an aqueous environment within their mother’s body, which resembles the originary form of life in our planet, also have an urge to return to the womb, and this is acted out in coitus. Psychologically, the human drive for joining bodies and fluids with a mate symbolizes both the individual’s urge to return to the mother’s womb and that of the species to go back to the ocean.

Quite apart, from any appraisal of the validity of these bioanalytical efforts, there remains the idea that Mind starts from an undifferentiated original state, that such a state somehow persists in the more mature states of being, and that there is a yearning, perhaps a drive, to return to it. Whereas Freud (1930a) discarded what he called the “oceanic feeling” as a primitive state of mind, characteristic of infancy, to be left behind with growth and development, which would only persist in adulthood in pathological conditions, Ferenczi’s 1924 book Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality, which was published six years before Freud’s, conceived this undifferentiated phase of experience as primary, universal, and continuous.

In human beings, this is what makes possible the appearance of “Thalassal regressions”, which are the basis for sexuality, creativity, art, religion, and social life, and also, of course, the analytic relationship. This concept is also needed is order to account for the conception of the analytic field, as it makes sense of the unconscious resonance between analyst and analysand, particularly in those moments in which, as Ferenczi wrote in his Clinical Diary —written in 1932 but which was only published in French in 1985 and in English in 1988— “It is as though two halves had combined to form a whole soul. The emotions of the analyst combine with the ideas of the analysand, and the ideas of the analyst (representational images), with the emotions of the analysand; in this way the otherwise lifeless images become events, and the empty emotional tumult acquires an intellectual content” (Ferenczi 1985 [1988] p. 14, my italics).

Consequently, I strongly feel that it is high time for us to acknowledge Ferenczi as a precursor of our psychoanalytic field theories, and reap the benefits of the study of his many contributions and suggestions from the perspective of our clinical and theoretical interests.

Ferenczi, S. (1933). Confusion of the tongues between the adults and the child—(The language of tenderness and of passion). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1949, 30: 225–230. Also in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24: 196–206. [Reprinted in Ferenczi (1955), Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods of Psycho-Analysis (pp. 156–167), M. Balint (Ed.), E. Mosbacher et al. (Trans). London: Karnac, 2011.]

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Juan Tubert-Oklander, MD, PhD is a psychoanalyst and group analyst who lives and practices in Mexico City. He has written and published a great number of papers and book chapters, as well as six books —three in Spanish and three in English. He intends to use this blog in order to publish reflections and discussion about field theories —both in psychoanalysis and in other disciplines— and invites readers to send their comments and contributions.